Itinerary/Syllabus

Itinerary

Week 1: Quito, Puerto Ayora

Week 2: Garrapatero, Santa Cruz, Floreana, Espanola, South Plazas, Santa Fe, North Seymour, Las Bachas, Genovesa, Bartolome, Sullivan Bay (Santiago), Quito 

Syllabus

While on Santa Cruz, we will spend time at the Charles Darwin Research Station and visit various other sites in the vicinity. BIO 1100 reports will be given on the evening of December 13.

During Week 2, the naturalist on the yacht Angelique will typically lead two hiking and two snorkeling/diving excursions daily, each in distinctively different environments.

Students are to participate fully in all excursions and field observations to the extent that they are able to do so. Full, enthusiastic, considerate, and thoughtful participation will earn all of the possible participation points.

However, participation should be refused if the student perceives an unacceptable risk to be required. In the latter case, students should arrange alternative assignments to earn “participation” points.

Selected times (especially after dinner) onboard the Angelique will be allocated for lectures, discussion, and journal writing — generally, after dinner.

Students will make and submit careful notes of field observations — species identified, approximate numbers present at a single viewing (i.e., few = 2-10, many = 11-100, abundant = >100), locations where observed, and behaviors observed. Special note should be made of how behaviors related to the environment and other species sharing the environment. There should be entries for each land and water excursion December 11-21.

Students will keep and submit a personal journal of daily experiences — accounts of, insights gained from, and reflections on these experiences. The journal should be primarily a record of what the student would like to record, and it will be written in the same notebook used for field notes. There should be daily entries for December 9-21.

Students will pose hypotheses to be tested by field observations. Data will be gathered from field notebooks. Results will be analyzed, conclusions will be drawn, and reports will be written at the end of the students’ field notes. Reports will include an abstract (brief summary of the whole report), introduction (establishing purpose of the study and what is currently known about the topic), methods (describing the who, when, where, and how of data collection and analysis), results (data collected) and discussion/conclusion (drawing conclusions and explaining how the results compare with what was known). The notebook with journal, field notes, and research report will be due on the morning of December 22.

A written exam will be administered on the evening of December 21. This exam will focus primarily on species identification as well as the life histories (growth and development, nourishment, reproduction, predation, etc.) of selected species as they relate to each other and their physical environment.